Archive for mission organization

Too many people I talk to have this idea that to be organized you have to have everything put away in a pristine white space with labels on everything. This is crap.

This is someone else’s vision. You need to figure out what organized really looks like for you. If you love color, this is a good place to start. If you hate labels, don’t use them.

I believe, and I teach, that being organized is being able to find what you are looking for, when you are looking for it. If you can’t find the tools you use to run your business, then you won’t keep your customers happy for very long. And your business is going to feel like such a drag, if you always feel behind.

Now don’t get me wrong some people thrive on stress, or at least believe they do. If you do then you should organize your business to create productive stress, rather than let stress build up on you unexpectedly.

Personally, I like to have things labeled and so I have a label maker and use it all the time. I like to have my business books close at hand, so I have a bookcase in my office for specifically for those selected titles. I keep a spiral notebook next to my computer so that I can jot down ideas or any kind of notes easily.

What I really want for you is to make sure that you aren’t trying to reach someone else’s idea of being organized. I worked with a woman several years ago that always had piles of paper all over her desk, but she could put her hands on almost anything you asked without hesitation. Now when people looked at her desk they assumed she wasn’t organized, but I say she was – it just didn’t look “normal.”

So chaos can be okay if you can really find what you are looking for. Just make sure you aren’t allowing a mess that isn’t productive for you.

There used to be a TV show on HGTV called “Mission: Organization” that had people come in and get people whose houses had become cluttered and get them organized. Now they weren’t focusing on the home office, but they did sometimes do the office area. I loved to see the before and after, but I really liked the 3 month follow up to see if they had kept up the clutter free lifestyle. The people that did the best were the ones that continued to tweak the changes to suit their family, and they had lasting results.

So my best advice is to find what works for you and keep tweaking the areas that aren’t working for you.